Having flown through PHL several times on US, and 50 percent of those times having lost luggage. I find it hard to believe that the baggage handlers in PHL work at all, forget about overtime!! Maybe thats how they caught on to the scheme!!

I do not condone fraud agree US Airways should take whatever action is necessary for people who have fiddled the systems.

But when people are earning a measly $10 an hour, and having trouble make ends meet. I can see why people could be tempted to de-fraud the company and make extra money if possible.

I know working practises and law vary around the world, but does the USA not have a minimum wage law? $10 dollars an hour is less than £5 GBP and in the UK is would be illegal to pay that sort of money. No wonder the poor get poorer and the rich get richer!

Quoting Gilesdavies (Reply 2):I know working practises and law vary around the world, but does the USA not have a minimum wage law? $10 dollars an hour is less than £5 GBP and in the UK is would be illegal to pay that sort of money. No wonder the poor get poorer and the rich get richer!

To answer your question, minimum wage is $5.85 per hour, increasing to $6.55 per hour on July 24, 2008, and $7.25 per hour on July 24, 2009.

All of yall have a serious lacking of understanding when it comes to Economics. That goes to show how stupid most people in the country are. Even if the minimum wage was $20 bucks an hour and they were making that, these people would have the same standard of living!! Prices for everyone would go up. This has nothing to do with the rich getting richer BS. If we lowered the minimum wage to $2 an hour, prices for everything would fall because no one could afford anything (that is where supply and demand take over).

There are always going to be people that won't be rich and struggling to make it in a particular industry, and that is the way it should be. In our system, we are free to pursue better jobs and make conditions better for ourselves. Now whether or not we take that leap is another story, but everyone is not entitled to equal compensation.

LLiriBDL's comment about this being a disgrace for our country and our politicians is an absolute crock of S***. Please gain a better understanding of Econ before making such an ignorant comment.

Quoting Gilesdavies (Reply 2):I know working practises and law vary around the world, but does the USA not have a minimum wage law? $10 dollars an hour is less than £5 GBP and in the UK is would be illegal to pay that sort of money. No wonder the poor get poorer and the rich get richer!

Don't forget almost everything in the United states is much less expensive than the uk. Housing, energy, groceries, automobiles, you name it, we pay less, and less in taxes too. Your minimum wage earners are no better off than ours, as far as purchasing power. $10 an hour to a college student who is working part time is pretty good money. We can argue all day which system is better, but at the end of the day, the real issues is fraud. The small amount these handlers are paid does not justify fradulant hours worked. On the other side of the coin, pathetic USAir will get what they pay for. Didn't we hear not long ago that PHL has the worst rates for lost baggage?

Quoting Gilesdavies (Reply 2):But when people are earning a measly $10 an hour, and having trouble make ends meet. I can see why people could be tempted to de-fraud the company and make extra money if possible.

They knew what the job paid when they took it. If you don't like it quit, and do something else. Not liking your pay rate is not an excuse for stealing from a company, and that exactly what this amounts to..theft.

Once again, greed betrays the thief. Once they stick their hand in the cookie jar, they just can't stop. They were caught when somebody noticed inordinate amounts of overtime paid to only certain employees.

Well duh. Maybe the reason those people only make $10/hour is because they aren't very smart to begin with.

Quoting Gilesdavies (Reply 2):But when people are earning a measly $10 an hour, and having trouble make ends meet. I can see why people could be tempted to de-fraud the company and make extra money if possible.

It's happened before at carriers that pay twice that... why do you think AA uses a hand scanner at ORD for the time clock...

US' performance at PHL has been downright dreadful for the past couple of years. I can tell you from experience that they will hire anyone that can read and write and show that they are physically capable of performing the job. The hiring process consists of showing up at an "open house" US Airways has at their Lester location, spending about an hour filling out an application and doing a one-on-one interview, only to have a conditional job offer (contigent upon passing a drug screen and background check) only a few minutes after arriving for the open house. They are desperate for people.... It's too bad they can't get their act together, increase the wage for baggage handlers and hire some higher quality people. If you make the wage 9.59 an hour and hire anyone, of course you're going to get a real crappy workforce. The workers take advantage of the crappy mangement at PHL, that's why you see this scandal going on about the overtime pay. They need better management and they need to hire better quality people, otherwise PHL is going to stay the atrocity that it is.

VikingA346 @ PHL

...you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you shall return

Quoting VikingA346 (Reply 13):They are desperate for people.... It's too bad they can't get their act together, increase the wage for baggage handlers and hire some higher quality people. If you make the wage 9.59 an hour and hire anyone, of course you're going to get a real crappy workforce. The workers take advantage of the crappy mangement at PHL, that's why you see this scandal going on about the overtime pay. They need better management and they need to hire better quality people, otherwise PHL is going to stay the atrocity that it is.

We aren't hard up for people at all. It's just that these are the people that the company is trying to funnel out. The ones that we hired years ago and were bad all along but skated through or were decent and then turned sour. We are overstaffed by close to 300 people or such for exactly this reason. They know they've got bad people and they are staffing accordingly to weed out the bad apples. I think hiring has gotten better as far as all the people I know that were hired with me or after me.

Quoting Swaopsusafatc (Reply 16):I heard on the radio today that USAirways is having an ice cream social hiring event. On site interview and employment for rampers at PHL. Guess they are replacing them.

Quoting HPRamper (Reply 15):A starting wage of 9.59 an hour at an airline is pretty darn good in the United States.

Especially for a job that requires very little skill. Before all you rampers start trippin', remember I worked on the ramp too, and while it is hard work, the basic job of a ramper is not that complicated. How hard is it to read a bag tag? Yes, there are some parts of the job that require skill: Load Planning, planning/leadership, Pushback, aircraft towing, but not all rampers have/need these skills.

Considering many rampers top at at over $20/hr in this country...it's no wonder airlines are struggling.

As far as the PHL situation is concerned...fire them all. They deserve it. But I'll give them some credit, that was a good racket they had going until some moron put 100hours of OT on their cert for one week...

Quoting RDUDDJI (Reply 18):Especially for a job that requires very little skill. Before all you rampers start trippin', remember I worked on the ramp too, and while it is hard work, the basic job of a ramper is not that complicated. How hard is it to read a bag tag? Yes, there are some parts of the job that require skill: Load Planning, planning/leadership, Pushback, aircraft towing, but not all rampers have/need these skills.

Considering many rampers top at at over $20/hr in this country...it's no wonder airlines are struggling.

As far as the PHL situation is concerned...fire them all. They deserve it. But I'll give them some credit, that was a good racket they had going until some moron put 100hours of OT on their cert for one week...

Shockingly, US Airways pays their new-hire Ramp Agents more than they pay their new-hire Customer Service Agents!

Quoting HPRamper (Reply 15):Quoting VikingA346 (Reply 13):
If you make the wage 9.59 an hour and hire anyone, of course you're going to get a real crappy workforce.

A starting wage of 9.59 an hour at an airline is pretty darn good in the United States.

If you're in it part time as a college student, or similar maybe. Ever try and live in Philadelphia on $10/hour? Even a lower mid-range, unappealing apartment in a reasonable location well away from Center City would cost you around 150% of your take home pay. You could of course find something, but I wouldn't necessarily want to walk outside at night. And we haven't even considered food, clothing and transportation costs. You'd essentially have to live at the Poverty level on Welfare to exist on that salary alone in Philadelphia.

This is not surprising, and is probably a wide-spread problem in the industry.

When I worked @ FL, we had a computerized time clock where you either swiped the bar code on your employee badge or entered your badge number on the key pad. There were guys who would leave early or would be late for work and have someone clock in/out for them.

When I worked @ EV, it was even easier to fudge the numbers as we used a time sheet that we would turn it at the end of a pay period. We had closing supervisors that would credit folks with 4 hours of overtime even if they only worked 30 minutes over (This was done so they could actually get folks other than the K-2 line folks to help out at the end of the night, but even those of us on the closing shift would get this as well, even if we got off on time.). There were pay periods where I made more money off of the overtime I was credited for than off of my base pay. Very rarely did I even work a quarter of the overtime hours of which I had gotten credit for.

25 Malaysia
: Another way of fudging numbers was one company that strictly used sign in sheets only and never used time clocks, I dont know if has been changed yet,

26 San747
: Interesting... Is this sort of fraud and incompetence and negative issues happening only with US East at PHL? It's not systemwide is it? I just got hi

27 Malaysia
: Oh I beleive it has happened at LAS as well. especially letting CWA Customer Service Agents pick up open time in the Timekeeping (nonunion) departmen

28 San747
: Great. Oh well, I just hope my new crew won't play any games like that. Honestly, what I don't understand about this whole thing is how those rampers

29 ContnlEliteCMH
: Or how about not doing it because it's wrong? My mama taught me that stealing was wrong. Apparently for some in this thread, their mamas taught them